Annual SAR Renewals

This is a commentary by State Treasurer Rick Smith about the SAR renewal process and how we do it in Minnesota. Specific details about 2026-7 renewals appear in a later post.

The SAR operates as a hierarchy: the National, State, and Chapter levels. Each has its own officers, meetings, dues, and activities.

The National Society of the SAR has always relied on the State Societies to handle certain responsibilities. These include:

• Talking to compatriots or the general public
• Processing new member and supplemental applications
• Providing state and local educational and patriotic services
• Annual renewals

For example, a local school or chamber of commerce could contact the National Society to ask about providing a color guard or living history event, but they would be redirected to the State Society for the actual answer. The National Society does not keep the information for answering such questions. Applications sent directly to the national office are returned. Practically all communication between individuals and the National Society is supposed to go through the State Secretary or, in our case, the State Corresponding Secretary.

States with a large SAR membership (the 13 Original Colonies and a few others) delegate these tasks to their chapters. Small states like Minnesota handle all of these tasks at the state level. Here is how we handle renewals in Minnesota:

Phase 1: Collecting Renewals

1. The State Treasurer (that’s me) makes a list of all members who need to pay dues.
   I download the state membership roster from the national Blue Database (visit it at sar.org), merge it with local data, and exclude the newest members, the life members, and the oldest members by membership date, which are emeritus members.
2. I identify regular members, dual members from other states, and junior members. I identify which members belong to which chapters. I calculate dues according to the type of member and to which chapters they belong.
3. I identify which members have valid email addresses, create customized emails (“mail merge” style) giving name, member number, and amount of dues due. There is also a link to pay dues online. I send this email.
4. I identify the emails that failed deliver and mark the emails as not usable
5. I take the members without email addresses, or with failed email addresses, and print up personalized “mail merge” letters to send to them.
6. I collect mailed checks and use the payer’s national member number to post them to the list of members owing dues. Then I deposit the checks.
7. I review online payments and use the payer’s national member number to post them to the list of members owing dues.
8. I will send out additional notices to people who haven’t renewed, either by mail or by email.
9. Phase 1 ends on December 31 of each year.

Phase 2: Reconciliation

1. I make a list of everyone who hasn’t renewed.
2. I pass this list to our Corresponding Secretary who copies this list into the state’s “annual reconciliation.” This is a large spreadsheet that lists the changes in our membership between the current and previous year.
3. When the Corresponding Secretary completes the reconciliation, the spreadsheet tells us how much in national annual dues our members owe.
4. The Corresponding Secretary sends the National Registrar our reconciliation spreadsheet.
5. As State Treasurer, I send in our national dues payment.
6. As State Treasurer, I count the number of members in each state chapter and deliver the appropriate dues to each chapter.

The Bad News

There’s no single best way to process renewals. It all depends on who has volunteered to handle the jobs. Minnesota has me to handle the checks, the Corresponding Secretary to send things to National, and our Newsletter Editor to generate mass mailings. I enjoy tweaking my part of the renewal process a little each year, though that also requires cross checking to detect errors. I doubt any other state does renewals the way we do.

It is hard to find volunteers these days. The tasks making up the renewal process are often solitary, clerical, or both. New volunteers often find themselves rebuilding parts of the processes. Not everyone enjoys these challenges.

Another problem is that the process may be disrupted by issues with volunteer schedules. Not every volunteer may be able to follow a consistent calendar year-by-year for mailing out renewal notices and processing the responses.

The Good News

National has been trying to make the process less painful. Their first attempt was to automate dues payments at the state level. This underscored the challenges of running a uniform process at the state level.

Most recently, the 2026 Annual Congress approved bylaw changes to allow dues collection at the national level. This seems most promising to me. There are already processes for reporting dues costs to National at the state and chapter level. This gives National a starting point for collecting dues for all three levels. National would then need a process to send dues payments to the states and chapters.